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Joe Swanson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2020

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150 Stories

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Miles From My Heart

Miles From My Heart “Do you hear that? Sounds like someone tryin to dribble a ball lacking air.”“Yes, kind of… maybe? Sounds like a drum beat from another planet.”“It is! It is your heartbeat.”“If it’s my heartbeat am I supposed to believe I’m on a different planet?”“Believe what you like. But that is your heartbeat, I guarantee it.”I found it to be one of those situations where you don’t know if you are dreaming or having another bad experience with a neighbor. The one who knows everything about everything and is not shy about sharing hi...

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Compromise

Compromise “You said you would never compromise your principles. And now look what you have done.”“What have I done? Think about it. Would you rather have nothing or what we can get? What is it you believe I am compromising in order to adhere to a pledge I made when I knew little of how the world works, and even less about people.”“You once said that once you deviate from an ethical code, you become the very thing you are attempting to eliminate. You must remember saying, “lies become the origin of more lies, distortions of facts, and th...

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Anything But That!

Anything But That!or maybe the other thing “And it was over, just like that.”“What was?”“What were we talking about?”“I don’t know, I don’t keep track of things like that. I put you in charge didn’t I?”“You may have, but I can’t remember. What was I supposed to be in charge of?”“If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. What would be the point? You’d just forget.”“I see your point, but you don’t have to be uppity about it. Someday you’re going to be old too.”#I have no idea what they are talking about. They are both old and alone, ...

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Talking to Yourself

Talking to Yourselfabout yourself-try it Aberdeen is in South Dakota. It is extremely hot in the summer and exceptionally cold in the winter. It is nobody’s fault, God made it that way for some reason biblical historians have yet to determine. They are not convinced God had not made a mistake; He is after all getting up there in years; which is what they all believe when being honest with themselves. The reason I raise this point is that Michael Shanahan, my son’s barber, had decided he did not want to cut hair for a living. He was a bart...

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Inspiration

Interpretation “A question has come to us this morning, and we are K-A-T-Y radio o o o o o o o. It is in response to our weekly Idiosyncratic Challenge. The question asked is, what is “Déjà vu, how can it affect me, and which foreign country is responsible for infecting us with it?” We’d appreciate only well-reasoned answers, Though the question is intriguing, it seems to cast aspersions on those who think outside of the traditional electro-magnetic field that we navigate daily. The first answer deemed appropriate, that touches on all th...

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The Weight of Time

The Weight of TimeHave you stopped and thought about yesterday, the day before, or are your thoughts focused only on the future, a tomorrow, the day after? Most of our lives are focused on not what has occurred, but what we hope will occur. It is part of the process of keeping from succumbing to the morbidity that surrounds a complacency we accept. Living in either the past or the future allows us to forgive ourselves for not living in the present. Why we do that? Lying here on the floor, my cheek pressed against the cold tile, my eyes ...

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Vibrations

Weekly Contest #336

Vibrations“Hel-ow… I’ll be with…”“Don’t helooo me.I’ve been on the phone for… must be an hour, maybe two. That music you been piping at me didn’t help my nerves any, if anything, it made things worse. I don’t know what kind of place you think you are running there, but I can guarantee you I’m on the verge of shutting the door on it and never looking back.I know you are probably thinking, what is all this about?Well I wish I knew. One minute I’m as happy as a bee in clover and the next minute it’s raining. Do you know that there should b...

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Snowball's Chance

Snowball’s Chance Snow, what is it? Where does it come from? Who cares, right? I don’t because I don’t think you have to care. Snow is not asking to see your driver’s license of what your credit score is before allowing you to enjoy its benefits. Not all of what we conceive of snow is a benefit, initially. It becomes one, but again that comes later so who cares? Shoveling it is has its rewards don’t get me wrong. There is nothing like the look of a clean dry sidewalk when you are lying on its frozen surface waiting hopefully for a nei...

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Old Times

Old Times “Have you ever considered running away from yourself?”“Is that even possible?”That is how it began that night outside the bus depot. How I got there, I had no recollection. There was a small suitcase I didn’t recognize sitting on the bench beside me, the rain seemed to start and stop without provocation; I was wet, cold, and exhausted. The woman sitting next to me on the bench acted as though I didn’t exist. I was surprised by how natural it felt.I have a habit of talking to myself, answering my own questions, giving myself dir...

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Coloring With Dreams

Coloring With Dreams “What you are saying is that our dreams are a way we rid ourselves of unnecessary emotional integrity, without need of a psychoanalyst ? I find your supposition naïve.” Smith, or Dr. Smith as he prefers to be called, was surprised by my rhetorical reply. He is not used to being challenged or criticized for his work in the area of Superficial Beliefs. He had spent the past ten years defining and redefining terms as they applied to Cognitive Evacuation; a term most often misinterpreted by those who believe dream...

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The Lost Woods

THE LOST WOODS Few believe they will become lost, and yet people every day find it difficult to find their way. Not in a physical sense, or a metaphysical realm, but in life’s trajectory. We are not provided a map when we are born or a place we are asked to accept; we have no alternative. We become part of a race or culture because…? There is no rhyme nor reason to why we are born who we are. There is no one to blame, not one to credit, for as we come to life on our own, so do we depart from it. The difference, that gray area betwe...

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Ascension

Ascension Adolph Monzuer was an invalid. He’d fallen off the roof of his apartment building while chasing a balsa wood glider he’d received for his birthday. He was 10 years old at the time, he was now 84 years old and for all the promises from the medical establishment, he remained unable to walk.As he looked back over his life he realized that perhaps his handicap had been the event that changed the course of his life for the better. He sat in his wheelchair at the bus stop waiting to be scooped up and deposited near the park on He...

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Curried Away

Curried Away “ Vacancy,” the word by the road lighted for the world to see. I walked the few steps to the door which hosted a handwritten message; “return in ten minutes.” It being 6 AM, I was not surprised. I pulled the door open and was accosted by the unforgettable smell of curry. I recognized the smell immediately despite having grown up in the Polish quarter of Chicago. There is something about the aroma when used liberally that brings tears to your eyes without it being the cause of pain. The hall adjoining the front desk was ...

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Jax Dobresnski

Jax Dobresnski One evening I was sitting at “The New U,” a small neighborhood bar. On the stool next to me was Skip Rope Dobresnski. Our meeting I had arranged to appear coincidental, as Skip Rope was not only shy but feared that many of the dreams he’d had of tabloid bottom feeders would materialize, and mistake him for his brother. Since his brother Jax had been mentioned in “New is Different,” a small mostly overlooked book dedicated to the most popular names for newborns in the past year, he had been asked to have his picture tak...

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Another Time

Another Time A ringing telephone, a knock on the door, a siren on the street, each sound absorbed and interpreted by our imagination. * “It was just a dream, wasn’t it? “I don’t know, you tell me.” “You were there, you must know. Did it really happen?” “What I do know is that two people can witness the same incident and come away with two different renditions of what took place.” “Can’t you just this once humor me. You are a world traveler, I’ve only been out of this state twice, and both times to the sa...

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